Chapter 119
Lucien Virell POV
Aegis Main Compound
Montana
Warm blood ran down my chin as the last breath slipped from the trembling girl beneath me. Sweet. Innocent. Unimportant. Her pulse stuttered.
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Suddenly there was a thud. I growled low at the interuption of my meal. A head, rotting and mutated, dripping black ichor, slammed down on the blood slick table beside me. For a moment, the silence was so loud I could hear the candle flames flicker. My eye twitched. What the actual fuck.
Then I snapped.
The body beneath me hit the ground like discarded meat as I launched across the chamber with a roar that shattered the sconces on the wall. Blood sprayed, glass rained down. The next two humans within reach screamed as I tore into them, one throat, one heart. Their souls barely had time to scream before I consumed them.
The third tried to run. Mistake. I hurled a table through her spine and reduced her to pieces.
“You. Absolute. Brainless. Wretch,” I growled, fangs bared, as I turned back to the decapitated trophy on my table. The message was scrawled on scorched parchment pinned through the skull.
Try again, bitch.
-E
My eyes went red. Not glowing. Not bright. Red.
“Peirce.” The name was a death sentence.
I didn’t even need to shout. I sliced my claw across the summoning mark burned into the bone of my own palm and whispered the words of compulsion as smoke hissed up my arm. Magic surged.
Within seconds, the door burst open. Peirce Godwin stumbled in, adjusting his cuffs, arrogance still painted all over his smug, bloated
face.
“Lucien, I was just about to report…” I blurred forward, seizing him by the throat. “You. Sent. The fucking mutations.” My voice was pure
ice.
He gagged and kicked. “I..was…helping!”
“You acted without orders.” I sank my clawed thumb into his temple, and his scream nearly shattered the windows. “You forget your leash, dog.”
His mouth opened to argue, and I buried my will into him.
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11:07 Mon, Oct 6
Chapter 119
Compulsion.
It coiled around his mind like chains of molten lead, and he went slack in my grip, eyes glassy, soul wide open.
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“I own you,” I whispered in his ear. “You don’t move unless I allow it. You don’t shit unless I nod. You don’t breathe unless I say so. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master Lucien,” he mumbled, hollow and dazed.
“Good.” I pressed my claw to his forehead and whispered the final word to seal it. Forget.
His memories burned into ash. He blinked rapidly and straightened, no idea what just happened.
“I trust you won’t act without direction again?” I purred.
“No, of course not,” he said, confused but obedient.
“Get out.”
Once the door closed, I turned and faced the blood splattered windows of my tower, my lips curled into a snarl.
This bitch. Elowen. She thinks she’s clever. I flicked my fingers, activating the blood mark burned into my chest. A single claw dragged across it, and the rune flared crimson.
Moments later, the minds of my second legion snapped to attention. I projected my command like thunder.
“Hold your positions at the fae realm portals. You move only when I command. She will come, and when she does, we strike. Bring her to me alive or I’ll rip all of your heads off and put them on fucking pikes.”
The blood dripped from my chin to the cold stone floor. Let them build temples. Let them gather their armies. Let them pray. I would burn their gods to ash.
I paced the room, muttering to myself. We need those disgusting human hunters. As much as I hate to admit it, Elowen may be to much for The Aegis Protocol to handle alone. My growl reverberates in the stone chamber. Self righteous hybrid bitch.
They were fucking filthy. Self righteous. Human. Arrogant. But… efficient.
The Hollow Creed. That’s what they called themselves. Real poetic for a bunch of ex–military psychopaths with a hard on for killing anything not born boring and bloodless like them.
They didn’t just kill shifters or witches, nope they didn’t discriminate and killed vampires too. Which meant I couldn’t walk in and charm them with my pretty face and silky lies. I couldn’t compel them. Couldn’t scent their weaknesses.
